by looloo 63 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
I have decided that Real One is a closet homesexual.
The old Shakespeare line comes to mind...
"methinks he doth protest too much"
Embrace yourself Real One! Become one with your natural you! Your homosexuality need not be hidden in a closet. Come out and revel in the colorful splendor that is you!
The Oracle
Real one's notion that all sins are equally sin fits in with his simplistic notions about the universe, but, as in this case, it leads to repugnant results. He wants the Bible to be a simple rule book with an internally-consistent theology, and he recoils from the fact that the Bible is a complex (and inconsistent) library of smaller texts composed of still smaller units, each of which has a unique origin and history. He's being intellectually and morally lazy. He wants simple answers to complex ethical questions, but he's not even willing to spend the effort necessary to determine whether his holy books really (and consistently) contain the precise position he is advocating. And look at the consequence: Even if homosexuality is a "sin" (whatever that most loaded of words means) the way breaking Caesar's speed limit laws is a "sin", it's disgusting to say these sins are equal to the sin of molesting children. Sure. Some parts of the Bible seem to advocate this way of thinking. By means of it, people are reduced to guilt-ridden infants who, after being filled with a sense of relief and gratitude for their forgiveness, enslave themselves to masters who are usually slaves themselves. But other parts of the Bible do not naturally harmonize with this infantile, slavish perspective. There are some truly profound statements in the Bible. But the foolish neglect them, and the wise seem to be increasingly disinclined to search for them there because the Bible's most vocal adherents are folks like Real One.
the sin of pedophilia is not mentioned by word in the Bible but it can be understood by the other scriptures like love thy neighbor(thats not love violating a child) or fornication, or homosexuality...yeah there are gay pedophiles, or illicid sex practices
Not selling your daughter to slavery or offering her to strangers to be raped would be considered 'love they neighbour' too wouldn't it? And yet in the bible we find many of "god's people" who did just those things and far worse...
As I see it, they act like homosexuals are worse. Homosexuals face disfellowshipping (unless you are doing it with a boy that you are "shepherding"). Pedophiles are protected by the donations that people put in those boxes in the Kingdumb Hell and the two-witness rule.
Which is totally backwards. Most homosexuals pick consenting adults as partners. Occasionally it starts in grade school, but even then both of them are usually about the same age. Either way, neither is initiating force and/or coercion to get the other person to consent. As such, there is no true victim.
With pedophiles, it is different. Here, I am not putting age limits on the situation. The pedophiles will coerce the victim into accepting, usually as part of a "shepherding" call. The victim is usually told that accepting the sex will enhance salvation, or is somehow tied to salvation (sometimes the parents are also told something that connects consent with the pedophile activity with salvation). Sometimes it is forced, and this has been known to happen while out in field circus. There was a high profile case of a witless getting busted filming boys peeing at a major airport facility (at that, a Beth Hellite). They also use babysitting (and trust is an implied requirement for salvation) as a blind to commit their acts.
The difference is that the children do not consent without being forced, threatened, or scammed into it. That rules out the cases where the children initiate the contact or trick someone into thinking they are old enough, and the "jailbait" cases. Even factoring those out, most (if not all) JW pedophiles use the religion to force the consent. And worse, they then silence the victims. If they tell someone about it, they will be disfellowshipped for "slander". That is never done with consent of either the victim or the parents, except where the parents are the molester (as sometimes happens). They then use money that is donated for the "worldwide work" to defend pedophiles and silence the victims (hence the Worldwide Pedophile Defense Fund).
I wonder if they have a Worldwide Homosexual Defense Fund.
the sin of pedophilia is not mentioned by word in the Bible but it can be understood by the other scriptures like love thy neighbor(thats not love violating a child) or fornication, or homosexuality...yeah there are gay pedophiles, or illicid sex practices
That is obviously no more than your own personal opinion... Who decides if it's unloving or fornication to marry a child? The Bible doesn't say that. In all it's hundreds and hundreds of laws, it fails to condemn pedophilia.
Couldn't god find room for quick: "Thou shalt not lie down with anyone amongst you who is less than 16 years old." (I can personally guarantee, that if that WAS in the bible, some people would say that by "years" he meant "days"...)
Here we go again.
But why do folks equate pedophelia and homosexuality?
Pedophelia, is nasty regardless of its intent or target (hetero/homo).
But, we all know all too well, what makes for prurient press.
Guess which one .
Many Bible scholars and I think the WT among them say that Mary could have been as young as 12. Is Jehovah a child molester?
I don't remember if the Bible says anything about paodophiles , Help, Please anyone ?
I can't remember anything in the Bible having to do with pedophilia, but a good place to start would be the Society's recent condemnation of it. I believe I recall their citing a scripture to support their condemnation. However, I would not be surprised if the Bible does not contain one. The subjection of children, women, slaves, and foreigners to men in ancient times could be almost absolute. In Greece and Rome (though in Rome laws were eventually made to protect freeborn children from abuse) girls were looked at as dangerously potent and in need of a male influence to tame them as soon as they hit puberty. Thus, it was not unusual for a 13-year-old girl to be married off to a 30-year-old man. This abduction (for marriages were ritualized abductions) was made even more traumatic due to the fact that girls were isolated from and taught to distrust men, and were kept quite ignorant, while an adult male would have a wealth of confidence and experience (sexual, intellectual, political, etc.). I believe this might be another example (cf. their apocalypticism) of a way in which JWs preserve one of the negative aspects of the primitive Judeo-Christian tradition. I don't think the Jews' condemnation of male homosex (female homosex is not mentioned, and this is significant for a variety of reasons) has so much to do with a concern about object choice (the main concern of modern Christians, which they import into their reading of the texts) as it has to do with notions of proper male roles, the centrality of procreation, and avoidance of what was perceived to be a pagan practice. Thus, since object choice per se was not a notion that occupied their minds, it's unlikely that you'll find a condemnation of having sex with someone based on their age.
